The government of Vietnam has implemented a few (previously alluded to) measures restricting online games as it bides time in order to formulate an overall master plan for dealing with the industry.

Minister of Information and Communications (MoIC) Le Doan Hop called for the immediate implementation of a trio of stop-gap measures reports Saigon Daily: until new laws are drafted and propagated, all new licenses for online games will be suspended, all public media ads for online games are banned and Internet cafes will have to shut down game services between 11PM and 6AM every day. Vietnam News stated that these measures will be in place through year-end.

Gamers will also be limited to three hours of playtime for any title that interacts “with a server,” though taking part in educational or cultural games will be permitted for four or five hours per day. The Ministry will also draft a provision for dealing with offline games.

The Department of Information and Communication also ordered game operators to detail the level of violence in titles they offered via a report which “must include video clips that illustrate the violent nature of particular games.” They have until August 2 to submit these reports, according to Vietnam Net.

Operators also must break down games into acceptable age groups, selecting from six and under, 6-11, 12 to 15, 15 to 18 and 18+.

The measures were taken, according to Vietnam News, following “a public outcry about their (online games) negative influences on the youth.”

The paper added that a whopping 100 percent of respondents to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Education and Training indicated that they played games on the the weekend. During the week, the number dropped to 70 percent for kids in Ha Noi and 76 percent for children from Ho Chi Minh City.

How does the government plan to effectively enforce the regulation of that three hour limit of server interaction? I guess it could be possible if the servers and/or service providers are in Vietnam. But how would it be done for games that interact with servers outside the country? Do they also plan to regulate the play time for offline games?

Also, they're doing all of this over a public outcry over alleged bad influence on the youth? So if there is a public outcry over violence or aggression being instlled by competetive contact sports, they'll plan to regulate it as well? I mean, computer/console games aren't the only source of interactive "violence" in the world.

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

prh99: Just replace cinematic with the appropriate synonym for poo and you'll have gist of any press release.03/02/2015 - 5:34pm

Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm